Back in the halcyon days of 2015, rap superstar Jay-Z had a dream. A dream of a streaming service that would change the face of the music industry and empower the music community by offering an alternative to Spotify that would pay more per play, and give users access to lossless audio. While that dream ended up to be more of a pie in the sky than something consumers asked for, and no amount of star power convinced people to shell out $10 dollars more for an audio format not a lot of people could take advantage of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYGdcLbFkw If you were swayed by the service's impressive marketing campaign and made a trial account, it might be a good idea to check your credit card statements. According to a report from The Verge, it seems that the service has accidentally reopened trial accounts of people who decided not to continue using the service after the trial period ended and has charged those accounts for a month of access to the tune of $19.99. Yep.
In an email sent out to subscribers, TIDAL had this to say:
We are sorry to inform you that due to an error, you have been billed 19.99$ for a TIDAL subscription.
We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience, and have already refunded the amount to your account. However, it can take from 2-5 business days to show up on your credit card statement.
If you got the email offering the apology, you will receive a refund shortly in addition to 3 months of TIDAL Premium for free. Seems like TIDAL is trying to turn this unfortunate mistake on their part into a potential hook to draw in more costumers. It doesn't seem like you'll be charged after those 3 free months of premium are over.
Quick Take
It's unfortunate that TIDAL's return to the limelight is because of an administrative error. At least they were quick to respond to this, and the people affected got some free music out of it!
